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Tomorrow is the release date for Knife by Salman Rushdie, a memoir about his attempted murder by stabbing. We haven’t heard much about this book in the lead-up: it appears that release copies weren’t offered even to the biggest publications. Today, though, reviews are starting to come in from media outlets, mostly with praise for Rushdie’s reflection on this near fatal attack.
In one interview, Rushdie shares that the attack, during which he was stabbed 15 times, lasted just 27 seconds: “You can do a lot of damage in 27 seconds if you’ve got a knife.” After decades of living under a fatwa and avoiding several assassination attempts, this murder attempt came from an unexpected assailant. Hadi Matar is a New Jersey resident who admitted to only reading “like, two pages” of Rushdie’s work. Matar said that after watching clips of him on YouTube, he found him “disingenuous.”
Here are seven facts learned from Knife, according to the Telegraph:
- Rushdie’s greatest fear is blindness.
- He saw the attacker coming, but did not move: “I just stood there like a pinata and let him smash me.”
- His wife, who was not at the event, was told Rushdie would not make it. Doctors spent eight hours operating on different parts of his body trying to save him.
- He was stabbed 15 times.
- He had a dream about being stabbed days before the attack and almost cancelled the lecture.
- He knows about at least six previous assassination attempts.
- Rushdie has 24-hour protection by Metropolitan Police when he visits the UK. He hires private security for his home in New York.
